How to Save a Life
by VivaCohen
Summary: Zombies on the rise, humans on the decline, Foreman and Chase on the run.
1. Chapter 1

Foreman drove in silence for 50 miles, music turned off, thoughts of the past playing like an old film inside his head: silent movies of House thumping down the busy halls of Princeton-Plainsboro, making quips about Cuddy's breasts. House, being inappropriate and misanthropic. Cameron… still-brunette Cameron, when they were still young and the three of them were a unit. Because those were the years when they were being formed before they started to fall apart. Those were the years that meant something, in retrospect. Cameron before Cameron and Chase became one entity. Cameron with her sad smiles and puppy-dog eyes. Cameron, who was annoying, who Foreman missed. And Wilson and Cuddy. And the patients. All of the patients. So many patients who they saved over the years, and for what? To delay a death that would come only a few short years later? Old men and mothers and brothers and children. Statistically, in all probability, the mothers and fathers and children and all of the friends of almost all of their past patients had probably died not too long before or after said patients. Small mercies. Foreman's life's work… saving lives. All those years spent over medical tomes, all those nights he opted to stay in and study rather than have a good time, all of that mental energy put into learning how to save a life. And for what? All of the medical knowledge of every medical specialist in the world doesn't contain the answer to what's wiped out almost the entire world population. So he can remove a tumor, bind a broken limb. What does healing mean when the best you can hope for in this world is a few more years. A few more years of fear and running. And loss.

Foreman felt a violent burst of fear in his stomach then reached for the remote control lock on the car's key ring, locking the doors of their mobile prison cell, lest anyone- or thing- try to break into the car. It had happened before. It happens all the time now. And less and less road goes by between when it happens the more time that passes.

Foreman looks to his right, to the sleeping body curled up on the seat next to him, oblivious to the world. In an escape not available in waking anymore. The body that is so tense and ever-alert in waking, still and at peace for the first time in two days. Foreman often wonders if it might not be better to just let oneself go that way. To give into death, maybe even by ones own hand, instead of the violent, uncontrollable death that statistics say probably awaits them. To just sleep. To give in. Foreman thinks a lot about the statistics. He's done them himself. Of course he has. Most of the statisticians had died long ago. At least, Foreman thinks so. He's not sure. It's been so long since a newspaper was printed or a news report was aired. It didn't take long at all for those to stop, really. Sometimes he thinks life is death, now.

Foreman looks at the soft breaths, the rising and falling of the body next to him, and he wills them to keep coming. An irrational fear that one day he'll look over and they won't be there anymore. That one day he'll look over and Chase will be dead. It's irrational, he knows. They haven't been exposed. And Chase hasn't shown any symptoms. And why Foreman is so much more afraid of Chase dying than himself, he doesn't know. Maybe the idea of living alone makes him so anxious that he feels the urge to wretch in a way that the idea of dying with another person doesn't. Chase is all he has now, he knows. And is all he's had for a long time. For 9 months, he realizes. And if there are feelings for the blonde little white boy that weren't there before, in their past life together before the world went to hell, it doesn't matter. Foreman doesn't have to acknowledge them because to acknowledge a feeling is to give into it and he can't ever let himself give into feelings that statistics indicate will only end in death and loss. But Chase is all he has. That's not a thought or a feeling that foreman can push down or ignore. And he's all that Chase has. And that keeps him going now. It's kept him going since the day they started to run.

The day had finally come when the hospital walls caved to the ever-present attack. For as long as they had known that this would eventually happen, Foreman wasn't prepared for the mouth-foaming masses pounding down walls, quite literally, biting and sucking on organs and limbs, spraying toxic spit all over everything, contaminating everything, taking everything. Rotting, fetid bodies that had once been human, like them. Foreman freezes in the hallway of the NICU, horrified as he watches through the glass, a zombified woman consuming the remains of one of the newborns as the others gave rattling cries for mothers who would never come. Mothers who were probably dead by now. Or worse. Foreman froze, while everything else sped up around him. And then he felt a hard shove to the side of his arm and he was almost off his feet with his heart in his throat. This was it, he thought. This was the end. But when he looked up it wasn't the blood-soaked, decomposing mass of water and hanging flesh that he had expected, but familiar, bright but terrified blue eyes that stared back at him, only inches from his own terrified face. He hadn't realized that the shove had ended with Chase still clinging tight to his own arm. He must have skidded into Foreman in his panic, but the look in his eyes, an odd mixture of slight relief buried under ample terror was an indication that he had been looking for Foreman.

"Chase, what are you doing down here?" knowing full well that Chase didn't have a shift for another eight hours.

Foreman follows Chase's terrified eyes to the mulled baby behind the glass, the zombies unaware yet of the two doctors standing in the middle of the hallway.

"I- I- had. I stayed to take care of the Brambley baby she— she was premature, sick." And Foreman looked at what Chase was looking at. Saw what chase saw. The Brambley baby's limbs and spilled blood. The baby that was no longer a baby. And still-living wailing babies, one clutched tight in pale gray hands now.

Foreman sees the intent in his coworker's eyes before Chase even starts to move and he's throwing his body in front of the younger man before Chase gets even two feet towards the NICU.

"Chase! It's over. They're gone." He had known the babies were gone before they had even entered this world. He had known their birth would be a tragic one. That they most likely wouldn't live to see their next birthday with how things were going lately, with how fast the disease was spreading. Even then, holed up in the hospital for months, he had been doing the statistics. And stupid Chase, still trying to save people. Still seeing a point in life. Still fighting statistics. Foreman gripped Chase as he struggled against him, eyes wide and body pumped full of adrenaline. "They're gone, Chase! It's better for them this way." Foreman was horrible, he knew. A pathetic excuse for a man. A biological anomaly, maybe. Letting tiny babies suffer and die at the hands of these foul animals instead of at least trying to save them. But it wasn't the babies he needed to save. It wasn't the babies he needed to protect. With one last glance at the tiny thrashing limbs of the Gunther baby and the larger thrashing limbs and gnawing teeth of the gaunt, black-haired rotted woman feasting on the soft, new flesh, Foreman grabbed Chase's shaking arm and yanked it hard until Chase was following him quickly, stumbling down the hall and into an empty patient room, slamming the door behind him, then barricading it with all of the moveable furniture that he could find in the small room.

For a few moments it was silent but for the distant bangs and shrieks down the corridor. For a few seconds Foreman and Chase stood staring at one another, wide-eyed and frozen, Chase's mouth hanging slightly open like some cartoon guppy fish and Foreman pictured all of the hospital in chaos while they stood motionless in their own pocket of stillness. He had seen it. He had seen how many zombies had infiltrated the hospital once they finally breached the back door and he had seen the death and destruction that they had caused in such a short amount of time when he was running through the hospital. He had seen seemingly weak, decomposing zombies with atrophied muscles somehow overtake and consume mouthfuls of flesh of dying doctors twice their size and a million times their health. He had seen pink-tinged saliva spray out of yellowed, foaming mouths convert three doctors and two patients within 20 seconds and he had seen those doctors and patients convert yet more doctors and patients into those horrifying creatures only seconds later. And he kept running. Away from everything, to nothing. Where he was running, he didn't know, but he knew if he stopped he would be lost forever. It wasn't until the wailing babies stopped him in his tracks that his feet froze. The wailing babies and the blood-curdling scream when teeth breached flesh. The babies he had abandoned. Now the sudden safety of the barricaded exam room came as a system shock, didn't feel real.

"Chase." He was suddenly very aware that he wasn't alone. That he was trapped. That outside was death. That even the hospital, where life is given, was now death. But he was not alone. His mind clung to that fact as if his life depended on it. Chase did not move, did not seem to breathe. "Chase, we have to get out of here."

"Maybe they'll leave eventually." Some wicked, false hope Chase offered but they both knew it wasn't true and Foreman answered it only with a look of serious doubt.

A stuttering, heart-hammering attempt at speaking, "But- but H-house. Cameron."

Foreman had to be the bad guy. Had to force his feelings down. Good guys die if no one is the bad guy. "Chase, they're gone already. We have to go. Now." And with that he began working on the exam room window, trying to ignore Chase's hurt look. Foreman was a murderer. Foreman was killing Cameron and House and Cuddy and everyone they had ever known. But Foreman was not going to let Chase die here. House and Cameron and Cuddy were as good as dead, if they weren't already, and both Chase and Foreman knew that death would be a blessing they should wish for their friends at this point. But Chase was alive, standing right here with Foreman. This thought repeated in Foreman's head, on a loop, as he broke the window open and scurried through it, dragging Chase roughly behind him. Then they ran. They ran for blocks and blocks. They ran on empty streets, past long-abandoned shops; the only noise or movement the occasional zombie chasing after them or rustling through some garbage can or empty cars. And they ran. The first real sunlight or sky they had seen in months other than through panes of glass was just now starting to set and Foreman grabbed Chase's wrist and ran faster than he had ever run before. He ran to nothing, leaving everything behind. It wasn't until hours later, hours of running later, that Foreman and Chase could run no more, collapsing on something soft in the dead of night where there was no noise and they slept until the sun lit over them in the sky and birds chirped them awake, and they found themselves in a soft green field, a long expanse of tiny white flowers and one old tree far off in the distance. The day before had seemed a dream, only he he had just woken and the nightmare was still real.

But now Foreman is driving and it's been miles and miles since he's seen a field or slept that deeply. It's been months since Foreman grabbed Chase and started running, and they haven't stopped yet.


	2. Chapter 2

The zombies eat human flesh but they seem to eat human food as well. Foreman and Chase pass by mobs of zombies clearing out grocery stores as if their stomachs are bottomless pits. But they don't seem smart enough to grow their own food. Theoretically, they'll eventually die out if they don't evolve fairly quickly and Foreman doesn't see them evolving any time soon. But it will be too late for humanity by then anyway. There's nothing to do. Foreman and Chase are waiting now. Waiting for nothing, but waiting nonetheless. driving on this never-ending trip to nowhere, with each other, like some nightmarish college road trip to hell. There's fear, certainly, but mostly it's just a heavy boredom day after day, night after night. Nine months of nothing.

It's noon and they're running low on fuel. It's amazing they've made it this far without having to abandon the car but now they're almost on empty. Foreman doesn't think Chase has noticed yet and hasn't told him yet. If it had been the other way around he would have wanted Chase to have told him but for some reason he can't bring himself to tell Chase that they're most likely going to be hiking it from here on out. Because Foreman has a feeling that this means almost certain death. Even if they hiked to a gas station and back or found another car, that time without the protection of the car would significantly up the probability of being attacked, especially with how many zombies they had been passing the past couple days. Instead, Foreman tells Chase to get some shut eye ('while he can', he thinks) and blasts the air con even though it's wasting gas. At least they can be cool for the last bit of their lives. They had been sweating in the summer heat for days now, afraid to waste the gas, and Foreman is surprised that Chase takes his advice and sleeps and is even more surprised that he doesn't ask questions about the sudden blast of air pumping through the A/C.

Chase has been not totally there the past few days. He seems lost in thought. Once Foreman asks him why he's so quiet and Chase just asks Foreman if he wants him to drive for a while so foreman doesn't ask anymore. But he wonders what he's thinking about and if it's the same stuff Foreman thinks about or if the narrative of chase's life being so different from his own makes the narrative of his death different as well.

Chase wonders if he'd be dead by now if he hadn't taken that NICU shift. If the Brambley baby hadn't been premature. Her mother had been so anxious that she hadn't been eating and the baby came early. If she had eaten better, would Chase be dead in the hospital right now? Decomposing? Or worse, a zombie? Or would he be alive and safe? He wasn't sure. But this he knew: even if he was alive, he would be alone. Like he had always been.

Foreman wonders aloud whether his parents are still alive or not. If they're worried about him. Or if they're dead. He doesn't wonder aloud if they've been converted to zombies, although it's not a thought he can keep from himself. He finds himself thinking of random people from his life and wondering if they've been converted, killed, or perhaps are even still alive. Like a broken record in his head that never stops and never changes but for the name in question. It had been so long since he'd heard from his parents that he couldn't imagine that they could still be alive. He thinks of his father, taking care of his mother, having to explain again and again to her what a zombie was as the Alzheimer's continued to affect her brain and part of him wished his father dead. But mostly he wished his father was alive and with him now, with his unwavering faith. Faith that Foreman couldn't seem to muster. He knew that if his parents met with zombies they wouldn't stand a chance and he knew that statistically, they must have met with zombies by now. He imagines his parents staying in their house, safe from harm, but the vision evaoprates. Eventually they would have had to eat. And neither of them were much for fight or flight in their older age. More than anything he hoped they were dead and wouldn't suffer any longer.

Chase says he doesn't have that to worry about. Or anyone, really. Never has. It's all Chase will say on the matter. He's never had anything to lose. Or anyone. He says it so matter-of-factly that Foreman finds Chase's complete lack of sadness over this fact kind of sad in itself. But he's also jealous.

Chase wonders if this lack of loss is God's gift to him for believing in him enough to go to seminary. But he also wonders sometimes if this is actually a punishment from God for not believing in him enough to stay in seminary. Mostly he wonders if God is there at all. It would explain a lot, either way. And Chase has spent his whole life wanting an explanation; answers for why his life turned out the way it did. Why his life was so empty of people to care for and to be cared for by. Why he was given so little to lose. But he refuses to sound sad about it in front of Foreman.

But now Chase does have someone to lose, in this weird twist of fate. He finally has someone to lose and someone to live for, now that living has become so near impossible and losing has become so probable. The irony does not escape him. He doesn't much fear death but he doesn't want to ever become one of those violent rotting corpses. He tells Foreman to kill him if he's ever converted, both for Foreman's safety as well as for himself. Foreman rolls his eyes and tells him to shut up.

Foreman drives the car through another small town looking for an abandoned store that still contains food; something they haven't encountered in two days. The hunger in his stomach has been with him so long now that he barely notices it anymore, but his eyes droop at the lack of energy and he finds his mind making a list to keep himself awake. His father has his faith, his mother can forget, the Brambley baby had either white clouds and cherubs or complete nothingness, both of which were preferable compared to the here and now, and Foreman had… Chase and an old Dodge Charger they found abandoned on the side of the road a few states back. It's not much, but it's enough.

The air feels cool and nice coming from the vents and he can finally appreciate how the sun casts light through the green leaves on trees so perfectly as if in a painting. He hasn't been able to appreciate the sun like this sense summer began and the oppressive heat became something to resnt. But in this moment it's lovely and he has a few minutes to savour it and a few minutes of oblivious sleep to give to Chase before everything ends.


End file.
